


3 a.m.

by myystic (neoinean)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Broken Wings, Clan Mitchell, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-18
Updated: 2008-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoinean/pseuds/myystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cindy Lou doesn't always know what to make of her brother-in-law's boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3 a.m.

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Take These Broken Wings](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1025) by synecdochic. 



It's the crying that wakes her.

And why shouldn't it? After all, it's her baby making that ungodly noise. If she listens hard enough, Cindy Lou can almost imagine that she hears them. The Mitchells. It's foolishness of course -- nobody ever hears anything else whenever the Mouth is sounding off -- but Cindy Lou can feel it in her bones, the turn and creek of every other mattress in the house. There isn't a single Mitchell on God's Green Earth that can sleep through the sound of a baby crying, and right now they're all waking and shifting up on instinct. But then the banshee scream cuts out, drops down into a set of fussy gurgles before silencing completely, and Cindy Lou listens hard from head to toe to find the Mitchells all bedding down again...

Nothing. Just the not-quite-sounds of the Mitchell homestead, settling. Even the old house wakes for hearing the need in one of its own.

Lying in bed, lulled by the softness of the not-quite-silence, Cindy Lou figures the Mitchells have all gone back to sleep -- crisis over; not their turn to heed it anyway -- though she knows that if they'd thought for just one minute their help was needed they'd've gone falling all over themselves to offer it. Even poor Aunt Rhonda, who couldn't remember how to dress herself and confused them all for long-dead kin, had arms that never forgot how to tame a squalling baby. She'd been the salvation of Stewart's colic days, and Cindy Lou would cheerfully answer to "Marisol" again if ever Rhonda was well enough to sleep outside the convalescent home. Maybe then her little AJ wouldn't be so taken with his Uncle JD. Maybe then the Mitchells would stop not-saying things whenever another of her boys calls for their Uncle JD by name.

As if summoned by her thoughts, she hears the telltale squeak of that third stair -- and there's the reason no one's ever bothered to fix it -- and she knows that its JD, taking her son for a midnight stroll. Before she even realizes what she's doing, Cindy Lou is up and into her robe. Can't say why -- the baby's quiet and its a little late for her to suddenly decide she doesn't trust JD -- but something inside her is whispering that she should follow.

(In the months to come, Cindy Lou will eventually chalk it up to maternal instincts, and the reason it'll take her so damn long will be because she hadn't figured JD to ever be one to trip them.)

She finds them in the kitchen -- always a safe bet for a first guess at finding someone in this house -- and JD has the sling strapped to his chest as he stands before the sink, head bowed, one hand absently smoothing over her son's downy hair while the other sets to filling up the pot for coffee. He's barefoot and in sweats, and she pretty sure the pants are Cam's, but if he's aware she's standing in the doorway watching him he gives no sign; just continues to futz with the coffee machine one-handed while AJ makes soft, contented baby sounds.

"I'll take him," she says suddenly, stepping forward with arms outstretched, and Cindy Lou will never know whether she made the offer out of love or out of something small and petty because there isn't a Mitchell in sight to call her on it.

JD turns to her with a languid grace that makes her ache for Cam, asleep in a bedroom he'll never think as his and not knowing what his pants are getting up to without him. JD's arms wrap instinctively around her son to cradle him through the motions of slinking out of the baby sling -- and Lord, does that boy not _possess a spine_? His arms are sure and strong when she plucks her baby from them, and Cindy Lou is reminded yet again that if she hadn't been told something of his history she'd have sworn he had younger siblings stashed away somewhere.

AJ gurgles and fidgets before deciding that its alright for his mama to hold him for a while. Cindy Lou leaves him in the sling and pulls him close, this final blessing that God saw fit to giveth before having taketh away -- and chokes on the memory of all the times she's caught herself wishing his little life away into what-ifs. She hears JD banging pots and pans -- he's heating up a bottle, she realizes suddenly -- and she's struck with the sudden consternation of wondering whether or not to thank him or to whip one out and set to breastfeeding, just for spite -– and _Lord_, but she must be more tired than she'd thought if she's spoiling for a fight with JD Nielson simply because, at three a.m., she can't quite reconcile being eternally grateful for something she also occasionally resents.

So Cindy Lou finds a kitchen chair and drops down into it with that post-birth tired she's never really shaken loose. The chair makes a muffled sort of scrape across the kitchen tile and AJ tenses in her arms. She soothes him, little trilling nonsense words, and when he quiets without a fuss the half-breathed thanks to God is mostly reflex, but then it calls to mind Gran'ma's voice and the old proverb about the Good Lord not heaping more upon our shoulders than we can handle, and she remembers how that woman had a way of making truths out of all those little sayings everyone else dismissed as sentiment and wishful thinking.

But Cindy Lou knows full well what piss-poor comfort a memory can be, and when AJ suddenly decides to let loose after all she thinks she might start crying, too.

"Hey now, none of that." And its JD with his hands on her son, firm and gentle and -- Goddammit! -- _knowing_, and then just like that, Cindy Lou is letting AJ go; giving him up to arms she trusts to hold him far more than she trusts her own.

And then she's watching him, watching _them_.

JD shucks back into the sling again with the ease of habit, but AJ's working himself up to a good wail and doesn't seem inclined to stop. She watches JD, because its far easier than watching a suffering in her son when she's all but useless to him, and JD's face is a study in warmth and angles as he talks AJ down from whatever it was that set him off. He punctuates the lesson by holding out the bottle and her son settles into the crook of JD's arm, taking the formula without complaint –- and all of a sudden a fierce, roiling hatred for JD Nielson strikes Cindy Lou like a bolt out of stormy skies. It's a hatred for the usurper who waltzed right in and stole Ashton's role in his own son's life and hatred for the outsider that keeps the Mitchells up talking to all hours of the night when they're sure no one else is listening -– but before she could even think of what to do with it she takes a good second look at JD's face, and then just as suddenly that dark wellspring of emotion is drying up faster than the dregs of a Carolina summer storm.

Lord, but that boy looks _exhausted_.

And it isn't the "I've had a long, hard day and now the baby's squalling in the middle of my night" exhausted everyone in the house enjoys at one time or another. No, this looks closer to the "please dear Lord I'm begging for a light at the end of this tunnel, even if its the headlamp of an oncoming train" that's far too close to what Cindy Lou's been seeing staring back across the mirror lately for her to pretend that it's anything but -– and it shoves her up and out of her chair with help in mind faster than a Mitchell glare.

Good thing the coffee machine chose that moment to chime, else Cindy Lou would have felt mighty foolish standing around with nothing but a pocket full of good intentions.

"How you take it?" she asks JD, and she could have sworn he'd startled at the sound of her voice, but then he'd looked so far off into his own world that he'd probably forgotten he had company.

"However you can make it not taste like what it is." JD couldn't have shrugged with a feeding baby in his arms but his voice covers the laconic gesture just the same.

Cindy Lou takes him at his word -- there's a lot of caffeine addicts in this world that absolutely hate the taste of coffee -- and loads his mug with as much creamer as it can hold, but goes a bit easier on the sugar. A boy who avoids regular pop like it's the Devil's own probably doesn't hold to heavily sweetened coffee. She curls up in her chair with her own mug then, holds it between her hands for the warmth of it, and sets to watching JD through the rising steam.

AJ's finished his bottle and JD sets it aside, but he doesn't sit down to his coffee. Instead he just starts to _move_, slow and liquid smooth with feet and knees and hips and back, and it's waltz and it's belly dance and it's "I really, really have to pee", and his arms are loose and strong with AJ cuddled close, his tiny head tucked beneath JD's chin, and Cindy Lou watches as her baby falls asleep like magic, like JD's body casts some sort of spell, and Cindy Lou finds herself a little bit awed and not just little bit envious. Then JD's settling her son into that bouncy cradle contraption they keep on the counter and, mercifully, AJ just sleeps on.

"Snake charmer," Cindy Lou mutters as JD returns to the table. She'd seen one at the fair once when she was small and the comparison struck her as oddly apropos -- but then it's the way JD sort of freezes halfway into his chair and just sort of _stares_ at her, like she'd suddenly grown two heads or her words hadn't been in English, that finally sets the corners of her mouth to twitching.

She figures it was the sight of her own amusement that let him relax and take the observation in the spirit it was given.

She watches JD sip his coffee, manfully hiding his grimace, and reasons that it's cooled enough to drink -- only to nearly spit it right back out again in her surprise. So JD'd gone and brewed up some of the decaff left over from her pregnancy -- no wonder he hadn't wanted to taste it. Far as she knew, she and Uncle Bayliss were the only ones who could stand for it as more than just a last resort. She's certainly never seen JD touch the stuff, and Cindy Lou wonders if he'd decided that he didn't need the caffeine at three a.m., because it was either that or he'd somehow figured on her company. Though, given the way he always seems to _read Cam's mind_, maybe that notion wasn't too far gone.

"You're good with him," she says suddenly, surprising herself with the admission and then again when she realizes how much it didn't hurt to make it. Ashton's loss is still a gaping wound that even the slightest touch could set to bleeding, and JD's care for AJ both is and is not one of those things, but here at three a.m. with decaff and JD and her son at peace, maybe she just doesn't have the energy to be anything but grateful.

The words draw JD's eyes to her again, but she'd be damned if she could read whatever swam through them before he blinked it away to offer that lazy, sunrise smile of his, the one that could charm his way straight up through the Pearly Gates. He doesn't thank her for speaking true, and she's not put out by how the words she'd never meant to say failed to start any sort of conversation, and so they simply turn back to their coffee because right then its the best thing going.

Cindy Lou's learned how to enjoy her decaff, but JD finishes his cup like Momma told him to take his medicine. Then he's up and going through the motions of clearing the dishes away, keeping a weather eye on AJ all the while, almost like he can't believe the Mouth hasn't woken up yet. He stops to stretch once he's gotten everything into the sink, and Cindy Lou watches as JD drags his arms above his head, reaching tall and arcing back, and though she's never been oblivious to how well he fills out Cameron's clothes its the tension she sees him carrying in his shoulders that draws her eyes this time, even more so than the teasing hint of ink peeking out above his hip where the sweats are drooping low.

When JD curls back down, the face reflecting back at her from the darkened glass is shadowed and unguarded, and Cindy Lou can't help but think that right then JD looked both every inch and nothing like the boy he is. Little wonder though, given the life he must've led before the Mitchells got a hold of him: orphaned military brat gifted enough to finish high school a year early, who won his legal emancipation and then played six degrees of Samantha Carter to hook up with Cam and open for business -- a business that's already afforded them that house in Austin and all the airfare in between. Cindy Lou would bet serious money JD'd never had any sort of childhood, and now here he is, not yet twenty-one and playing daddy for AJ and lover and partner and nursemaid and _God only knows what else_ for Cam, and all while still trying to work that business out of a house full of people just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

They're all more than half expecting JD to up and leave Cam any day now, Cindy Lou knows. She's heard and not-heard enough discussions on the matter, and even weighed in on a few, herself. And she sees the boy who flew half way across the country at the drop of a hat to pay his respects to a man he'd never even met simply because that man was her daddy grip the counter hard and hang his head in silent sigh, and then she sees the man who stood up to help them lay her Ashton to rest straighten out his spine and square his shoulders to the task of rinsing coffee mugs, and when AJ decides to wake up after all with a full-blown fuss she realizes that she's been staring at the glue that's holding her family to just this side of sane -- and her heart breaks, just a little, for the sheer tragedy of it all.

JD takes the baby in his arms, her son pulled close in and protected, wrapped up in JD's solid warmth (and it was convincing herself AJ reacted more to JD's abnormally high body temperature than to JD himself that's kept her from saying lots of things that would've set her own mama turning in her grave), and AJ quiets right on down. The seconds tick by into minutes as AJ teeters on the edge of sleep, and Cindy Lou realizes that she's waiting for JD to put him down again. He doesn't though, just keeps holding on in an unconscious way that warns her that JD's acutely aware of the precious bundle in his arms while at the same time, not thinking on it at all. JD's face is closed off, like he's staring at something a million miles away, and Cindy Lou knows better than to wonder what it is. Instead she thinks on Professor Burbage, and developmental psych her sophomore year, and she hears the words "self-fulfilling prophecy" echoing loudly between her ears.

And then AJ coos and JD shifts his hold to pull him closer, his cheek brushing against AJ's soft curls, and as JD's eyes fall shut Cindy Lou can almost feel the depths of his exhaustion like another person in the room, and she wants to worry -- no one that young has the right to look so old -- but she remembers that JD Nielson had to grow up fast, and she wonders why the Mitchells haven't taken to him like all the other strays in need and if it's simply because of which Mitchell JD happens to be sleeping with.

Lord but they've all been waiting for the kid to crack, for him to up and decide that he's got his whole life still ahead of him and that it'd be a whole lot more fun to spend it not tethered to a crippled veteran nearly twice his age, and as she looks back across these past months of living with that elephant following JD into every room, Cindy Lou suddenly finds herself commiserating -- _and I wouldn't blame him_ \-- and that's absolutely nothing against her brother-in-law because any fool could see that it isn't Cameron JD'd be leaving.

The Mitchells could be hard enough to take when they accepted you as one of them, Cindy Lou knows better than anyone, and though they may not have banded together to railroad JD the way of Jonas Hansen (not the the most recent relationship broken up by well-intentioned meddling but certainly the most infamous, and while she may one day forgive Ash for dying, she certainly won't forgive him for never sharing just _what the hell happened_ that sent Hansen packing three days early from his 4th of July leave, furious enough to spit nails and still dripping from the creek when he ushered an oddly shell-shocked Samantha Carter into their rental car, but then when Sam showed up unannounced but hardly unexpected for Labor Day with red-rimmed eyes and a bare ring finger, Cindy Lou'd decided not to press) -- well, that was because they actually _liked_ JD. All they had against him was his age and Cam's body -- nothing either of them could help, and Cindy Lou knows JD's been running himself ragged trying to prove them all wrong ever since the Legendary Christmas Showdown. And while he may have won enough ground to to be considered family, there were enough skeletons packed away in Mitchell closets to attest to how that didn't amount to squat under Momma's roof. Blood will out, and the Mitchells take care of their own.

From where Cindy Lou was sitting (three a.m., decaff, a quiet baby, and a thousand questions she'll never ask) it was starting to look a might bit funny that everyone seemed to trust JD to handle the children more than they trusted him to handle Cam. She firmly did not let herself wonder how much they trusted Cam to handle himself. Better to wonder about happier things, like how either JD Nielson has the patience of at least ten saints or that he's simply fixed on Cam like he's fixed on breathing air, but Cindy Lou already knows exactly which it is. Hard not to, after all these months of seeing the two of them together, and if ever Cindy Lou started wondering how wrong it was to want to adopt her brother-in-law's boyfriend, well this was the Mitchell Homestead. Stranger things have happened here.

JD is dancing with her son again, murmuring something low with AJ pressed into his chest, and though she knows its the resonance that matters and not the words she can't help but wonder just what JD's telling him. She remembers dancing with her daddy the day she married Ashton Mitchell, remembers his teasing that Ash wasn't much of a dancer and she'd have no one to keep her on her toes, remembers Cam cutting in with a laugh and a wink and a few words loud enough to carry about how Ash never was much for doing with his feet and then someone else -- could have been Carter, could have been George -- chimed in about how in marriage it was better to have capable _hands_, and the entire reception hall had been lost to laughter. Now she wonders if every last Mitchell isn't so fixated on what a fine dancer Cam had been that they've all forgotten just how capable Cam's hands still are.

Though Cindy Lou thanks God every night for giving Cam the chance to pull himself up out of his hospital bed and will himself back to walking, she knows full well that it was JD Nielson who finally set Cam on his feet again. And sure JD's leaving would break Cam's heart, but here at three a.m. with decaff and a fussy baby, Cindy Lou knows soul-deep that it wouldn't break _Cam_, because Cameron Mitchell proves again with every step he takes that he's just about _the strongest man on the face of the Earth_, and when JD heard Uncle Roy declaiming D.H. Mahan while sealing up the newest cracks in the old foundation ("_Therefore when we build, let us think that we build forever. Let us not be for present delight, nor for present use alone, let it be for such work as our descendants will thank us for_-" JD spoke right over him and finished it ("-_and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! this our fathers did for us.'_") and Nielson-Mitchell, the house in Austin, and the peace on AJ's face have all come from JD's hands. He would never give any of them over to Cam if he didn't trust that Cam could hold them. Cindy Lou knows that whatever JD builds, he builds to last.

AJ appears for all the world asleep again and JD stops, though he's still resting on the balls of his feet like he's expecting to have to start moving again any second now. Cindy Lou conjures up a smile and doesn't -- _doesn't_ \-- think of Ash first learning to juggle Chandler, and stands forward with arms outstretched–-

"I'll take him," but this time she knows exactly where the offer's coming from.

JD turns to her, and his smile looks -- relieved? Well, she can hardly blame him. She doesn't know the last time that boy got a decent night's rest, and to look at him Cindy Lou would bet that JD could say the same. He passes AJ over to her and blessedly, AJ doesn't even stir. Cindy Lou holds him close, breathes in his gentle baby-scent, and relishes the warmth and feel of this miracle in her arms. She sees JD roll his shoulders with a studied grimace and she wonders just what he's been up to in those self-defense classes that could so tarnish his usual grace, but when he lets out a wide, face-splitting yawn she finds herself fighting down the urge to order him back to bed -- almost-in-law or not he's still of an age with those who call her "Aunt Cindy Lou" -- but instead she grins at him.

"You should get Cam to work some of those knots out for you. I hear he's pretty good with his hands."

JD's head snaps up, his eyes wide and dark as that fallen cherubim smile slides across his face again, promises of heaven and hell and all things in between flashing in a gleam of teeth. "I'll neither confirm nor deny these rumors, miss." And he sounds so serious that Cindy Lou can't help but laugh.

"Go on," she says, shooing him out with a subtle tip of her head.

JD doesn't need to be told twice, and he bids her good night on his way through the door.

And AJ -- now wide awake in his mama's arms -- stays serene and silent as she carries him back upstairs.

 

-_fin_-

**Author's Note:**

> Quote from Industrial Drawing: Comprising the Description and Uses of Drawing Instruments, the Construction of Plane Figures, the Projections and Sections of Geometrical Solids, Architectural Elements, Mechanism, and Topographical Drawing; With Remarks on the Method of Teaching the Subject. For the Use of Academies and Common Schools, by D.H. Mahan, LL.D., Professor of Civil Engineering in the United States' Military Academy, published 1853.


End file.
